A market exists for the distribution of advertising and other information over data communications and entertainment networks. A non-limiting example is insertion of advertising copy supplied by advertisers for appearance on web pages having content offered by media distributors such as news and information services, internet service providers, and suppliers of products related to the products or services of the advertiser.
The value of an opportunity to present an ad (i.e., to exploit an “ad impression”) is different for different advertisers and different web page or entertainment genres, because the content of the media delivered by a particular media outlet draws users of a certain type that may correlate more or less strongly with a population of potential customers that an advertiser seeks to reach. Variation in the value of ads, the ability to discriminate among ad recipients as a function of the variable content of the web pages they access, and the ability to shift selectively to route appropriate ad content to a selected user when a web page is rendered all make on-line network communications a useful and efficient environment for advertising, and especially for targeted advertising.
The network could be the Worldwide Web, and the advertising copy could comprise banner ads, graphics in fields of specific size and placement, overlaid moving pictures or animation, redirection to a different URL, etc. The same targeting abilities also are applicable to networks that are interactive to a lesser degree, such as cable television ad insertion, which might be done at a head end or at a hub, or even from a subscriber-specific set top box.
Accordingly, ad impressions may be delivered in a manner to target characteristics (or attributes) of users or web page content—referred to as representativeness—with the goal to fairly represent the targeted characteristics in delivered impressions. When advertisers pay in advance by way of contract for a specific number of ad impressions, they desire a certain quality of representativeness, which creates what is termed guaranteed demand (GD). Normally, ad impressions are first served to satisfy GD contracts. Ad impressions may also be auctioned via an ad exchange on an ad hoc spot market when the ad impressions exceed projected guaranteed demands or are more profitably auctioned, which creates non-guaranteed demand (NGD). Availability of NGD ad impressions is generally resolved immediately before advertisement delivery in real time.
Optimizing a balance between meeting the guaranteed (GD) demand in a representative way that best targets user characteristics with a desire to increase NGD revenue and minimize penalties associated with under-delivery of GD ad impressions can be achieved through programmable modeling.